


listen to the fucking gps not my heartbeat

by celebreultimaverba, Royalwriter



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, everyone is in love, inappropriate use of crypts, polynein if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 21:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15981086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebreultimaverba/pseuds/celebreultimaverba, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalwriter/pseuds/Royalwriter
Summary: Beau gets a house when her father dies, and naturally brings her family with her. It's the getting there that's the exciting part, since they don't all technically fit in the car, and none of them do well cooped up. Everyone lives, for the most part.





	listen to the fucking gps not my heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Some fluff for this trying time, mostly crack, though we've sprinkled some soft moments in there as well.

“We have a house,” Beau announces to the room at large. The apartment at large, really—the walls are so thin that everything carries through them, which has made for an interesting amount of intimacy that none of them wanted but all ended up tolerating.

No one looks up at her. Assholes.

“I _said,”_ she starts again, and this time Fjord and Caleb look up. Nott is either drunk or asleep, head resting on the side of Caleb’s thigh, and Frumpkin (allegedly) doesn’t understand language. “We have a house!”

“Yes, we heard, but what’s that _mean,_ Beau?” Molly calls from the kitchenette.

“Means my dad finally kicked it, too, and I get his place. And I’m sharing it with all of you, because I’m just that fuckin’ generous,” Beau tells them, voice loud enough again to carry through the walls like they’re nothing but wallpaper. It’s a shitty enough apartment that they could be, but Beau has punched enough holes in the walls to understand that they’re just marginally thicker.

There’s a pause of sorts where no one quite knows how to react, before Jester, in one of the bedrooms, can be heard squealing. She’s out the door in a moment, her tail swishing in excitement—excited, even for Jester. “What’s it like?”

Beau shrugs. “It’s big.”

Caleb huffs a laugh. At least, Beau _thinks_ it’s a laugh. “Very descriptive.”

Beau gives him the finger. She’s _right._

* * *

“This is, and correct me if I’m wrong, almost certainly a plot Beau came up with to kill us,” Nott is saying. Caleb is squinting at her ears, trying to tuck them back into her hoodie in a nonsuspicious way so that they won’t scare any of the moving people.

“Nonsense. It’s clearly a plot to get us to kill each _other,”_ Molly replies, who hasn’t packed up half of their things because they refuse to admit to anyone but themself that they have no idea how to box up swords. Fjord’s was a nonissue—except for him getting a little drippy at inopportune times, his sword was just a thought or two away in some extraplanar space.

Molly should look into that.

“I’m just saying, she’s luring us across the country to some house she doesn’t even have pictures of so she can pick us off one by one on the journey.”

Jester gasps from doodling dicks on the cardboard boxes that are supposed to hold Caleb’s smut books (as if he ever reads them—Molly is almost sure that none of them can get _any_ edubation done in their current close quarters, despite all the jokes made) and says, “Nott, you’re right! We’re gonna die!”

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it ages ago, don’t worry,” Beau’s bored voice replies, facedown on the couch cushions as she does one last “bonding exercise” with the shitty furniture they’re rightfully leaving in the shitty apartment.

Molly had suggested burning it, but that was quickly vetoed, with two quick, furtive glances towards Caleb.

“Thank you, darling, your candor is appreciated, as always,” Molly purrs, and wonders how much yelling would happen if they revealed right now that they have not packed when the movers are scheduled to arrive in twenty minutes.

It turns out to be quite a bit. (“You are literally the one with the most stuff out of all of us!” _“You_ try folding a tapestry into a box like that and tell me how _you_ like it!”)

* * *

Fjord is the first driver, because he’s technically the only one of any of them with a valid license that Yasha actually trusts to drive her shitty van. They’re all kind of pretending like they aren’t leaving her behind, as if they’re sure she’ll follow, likely after the moving van.

Molly is sure, of course, but Fjord knows firsthand that Yasha can’t exactly get a new vehicle just like that, and she wasn’t living with them before, so an open housing invitation or not, Yasha could be staying.

Not that he, or any of them, would say this to Molly. Or Beau, for that matter. Fjord hasn’t seen Beau cry, and isn’t entirely convinced that she can, but with the death of her father and the implication that the love of her life won’t be following her, well, Fjord knows that sometimes jagged edges are much sharper than they look. He’s decided not to risk cutting them both. Not yet, anyhow.

Scream-singing to Disney songs got old after the first four hours of it, so Fjord turns off the radio, though Jester whines about it because, “We only heard that song three times, Fjord!”

“Can we pull over again?” Nott asks.

The entire car groans. “This is the sixth time, Nott,” Caleb points out, though they’ve all been keeping a tally. There’s not too much else to do.

“I’m _sorry,_ I’ve been drinking a lot. Goblin, small bladder,” she justifies.

Fjord takes in her squirming and half-decides to pull over before still asking, “Can you wait for the next rest stop?”

“No.”

He steps on the brakes, which he’s glad about when he asks, “Are you sure?” and instead of answering him, Nott rolls down the window and jumps out of it.

“Nott, _no!”_ everyone yells, because Nott can’t just _do that,_ and Caleb gropes into his fanny pack (“component pouch,” they call it, because Jester and Molly can’t allow Caleb to wear a fanny pack unironically) for something as he shouts something in Zemnian that Fjord recognizes as Feather Fall.

For his own part, he slams on the brakes, and when they come to a stop, Nott is running back to the car, Caleb practically launching himself out of the door he opens (was he wearing a seatbelt?) to bring concerned hands over her face, searching for any traces of hurt.

“Nott, you can’t do that,” Molly tells her.

“I’m fine,” she replies, and that’s about all they get from her even after the collective lecture.

“Put on your seatbelt,” Fjord grumbles, and though Nott curls up in Caleb’s lap instead, the rest of them do, and 80% ain’t too bad.

It’s not a terribly comfortable drive, even with Nott taking up as little space as she does. Beau had threatened everyone with a game of punchbuggy if she wasn’t allowed shotgun, and with the way she punches, no one was willing to challenge her for it. Caleb and Jester are in the next row, Jester’s hooves propped up against Fjord’s headrest and Caleb’s goblin-covered thighs sometimes smacked by Molly’s lazily-waving tail, in the third seat. _They’d_ threatened to take whatever it was they picked up in that truck stop, the skein that they hadn’t quite decided was safe or not yet. So they were contentedly stretched out in the third seat, most of the snacks on the floor beneath them.

After Nott’s whole scene, the drive is relatively quiet. Save for Jester, of course, and whoever decides to indulge her in conversation. It’s rather nice. They make good time that day.

* * *

On the second day Caleb refuses to stop for lunch, claiming that they won’t get to the rental house in time.

“There’s snacks in the car! You can eat on the road, it’s all fine,” he insists. Everyone groans, until Jester pulls out a box of donuts that no one saw her buy. It’s silent except for Caleb’s books on tape until about an hour after he makes the announcement.

“I hate to interrupt our noble quest to save time, but if I don’t piss within the next ten minutes I’m going to explode, which I think will delay us more,” Molly pipes up from the passenger seat.

“You could pee in a bottle! I saw that in a movie!” Jester offers.

“No one is peeing in Yasha’s car. I promised her it’d be clean,” Fjord insists.

“She’s never coming back, so it doesn’t matter! Let Caleb drive, he’s making great time,” Nott tells them all over him.

“She _is_ coming back!” Beau replies, very distressed.

The yelling starts to overlap until Molly whistles at a high pitch, long and low.

“I’m not partial to how I pee, but it’s approaching emergency levels,” they say.

Caleb curses under his breath, veering the car into an exit lane marked “Truck Stop.”

“Are you opposed to peeing with truckers?” he asks, with an edge to his voice that implies no will not be an acceptable answer.

“Not in the slightest,” Molly says, who really does have to pee and wouldn’t want to argue with that tone of voice anyway.

The problem arises when they pull off the road, and don’t immediately see a truck stop. Caleb looks nervous, but they don’t immediately turn back onto the highway because Molly’s starting to cross their legs in a manner that looks painful.

The road takes them the rest of the way into the “town,” if it can even be defined as that. It’s very tiny, there’s no visible chain restaurants or stores, and they see a Confederate flag immediately.

“Cool, cool, this is fine,” Beau says, clearly panicking.

“Do they have bathrooms?” Molly asks.

“Molly, you can’t get out of the car, you’ll be _killed_ here. _I’ll_ be killed here. We’re all gay, we’ll _all_ be killed here, actually!” Beau yells.

“I will pee myself in this car!” Molly yells back.

“You will not!” Fjord chimes in.

“There’s a single Hardee’s,” Caleb says, pulling in, “Who’s getting out?”

“Me.” Molly says, practically leaping from the vehicle. Fjord shrugs and goes after them, Jester following him. Beau and Nott slink deeper into their seats. Caleb keeps the car running.

“What are the odds we see them again, do you think?” he throws to the backseat.

“Fifty-fifty,” Beau says, at the same time Nott replies, “Zero, we should leave now.”

Caleb shrugs.

“I think seventy-thirty, against them.”

He’s proven wrong when five minutes later the three of them come out of the restaurant, darting into the car.

“Get out of here, I don’t want to stay in this place a minute longer than we have to,” Molly shudders.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Fjord says. Caleb passes Molly the phone.

“Help me get back on the road then, yeah?”

“Yeah. Okay, right out of here, then in a quarter mile you’ll turn left onto a Forest Avenue.” 

Caleb hums in acknowledgement, pulling out. The phone tells him to turn, but there’s only an unmarked dirt road. 

“It’s the next light, yes? There’s nothing here,” he says, bypassing it.

“Shit. No, that was it. It’s figuring something out except— No. Nope, it thinks we’re going the the opposite direction,” Molly informs them, panic seeping into their voice.

“What do you mean it thinks we’re going the opposite direction? Is it not rerouting us?”

“No, it is, but it thinks we’re going that way and reversing, or something. I don’t know why.”

“Alright. I’ll turn around then, I suppose in the next driveway we see,” Caleb says, and his fingers tapping against the wheel give away his anxiety.

“There’s another Confederate flag on that driveway, we’re going to get shot if we turn in there,” Beau points out, and Caleb swears, something filthy and fun in Zemnian.

“We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die,” Nott starts chanting, and Jester throws her arms around her.

“I’ll protect you, Nott!” she promises.

Caleb tightens his grip on the wheel until he sees a gravel road leading into a park. A park that has a gun on the entrance sign, granted, but a park nonetheless.

“We won’t die, Nott, see—” A child runs out in front of the car.

“Hit the gas!” Nott screeches.

“It’s a child, Nott!” Caleb shouts back, and then everyone else is yelling commands, the child gets out of the way of the car that Caleb is desperately trying not to have to park, and Molly is exiting out of the map trying to get it to reroute properly while simultaneously realizing that the reception in the middle of nowhere isn’t exactly great.

“Okay, okay, okay, back this way,” Molly says, pointing.

“Which way?”

“I’m pointing, I’m pointing.”

“Why are there so many fucking _kids_ here?” Beau asks.

“It’s a park, Beau!” Jester replies, and then everyone’s talking and Nott’s ears flick, eyes darting over to Caleb’s semi-panicked face.

“We should let Caleb and Molly talk,” she suggests, loudly, and Caleb pulls out of the park in the correct direction.

“Say hi to the Confederate flag again,” Molly jokes when they pass it again, and Beau flips it off instead. They make their way out of the town as quickly as is possible.

“That was the weirdest town I’ve ever been in. Zero stars,” Beau announces.

“Do we still have everyone? Head count,” Fjord instructs, and Nott actually turns around to count everyone.

“We’ve got seven, don’t worry.”

“We started with six.”

Everyone but Molly screams, at least for a second before they’re laughing and everyone else is realizing that the sudden new presence is Yasha.

“I didn’t think you were going to stop for a minute,” she says, very simply.

“We didn’t think we’d find you here, to be fair. Welcome back,” Molly says, leaning to hug her through the seats.

“Yes, but— where’d you _come_ from?” Beau insists.

“No, that’s true. We left you on the other side of the country, how did you get here?” Molly allows.

Yasha shrugs, and Beau forgets to listen to her answer because she’s wearing a weather-inappropriate tank top and the motion reminds her that Yasha has _arms._

Everyone else, though, hears, “I caught up.”

* * *

They’re going to die in this rental house, it’s been decided. Nott had been vehemently against staying in someone else’s house to begin with, and now the universe is punishing them. The snow started as they were pulling in, and it shows no signs of stopping.

They also can’t get the heat in the place to go above sixty degrees, so that’s where everyone is at right now. Caleb has gotten cold in seventy-five degree weather before when there’s been a breeze, so Nott’s been layering blanket after blanket on top of him and they have run out of blankets.

“You can’t just give Caleb all the blankets, Nott. We’re all cold,” Molly says, though they didn’t actually do anything when Nott was piling up the blankets, so that’s on them.

“He’s cold,” Nott replies.

“He’s also been asleep for the past six hours. Have you checked that he’s still alive, actually?” Beau asks, flicking at Caleb’s face before a green hand slaps hers away.

“He’s _tired,_ let him sleep,” Nott hisses, and everyone looks to the tired man sprawled on the place’s only couch. Asleep, he looks just a little bit too young. It tugs something maternal in Nott’s heart, something that she doesn’t _ignore_ so much as indulge in constructive ways.

“Nott’s right. This is the longest he’s slept since we started, we shouldn’t disturb him,” Jester says, and there’s a low murmur of agreement.

“Think there’s any food around?” Beau asks.

“We’ve still got a bunch of the road snacks,” Yasha replies.

“We can probably pretty much all fit on the floor here,” Nott hums. “If you want to take the blankets off of Caleb, you’ll have to snuggle him. If he wants to.”

Jester’s the first one in, carefully cuddling up to Caleb, disturbing him only enough that he moves to accommodate everyone also coming in.

* * *

The morning breaks with all of them still alive, faint yellow light drifting in through the windows. Caleb wakes up first, the edges of the cold room biting at the few exposed areas of his skin. Nott is tucked up against his chest. She’s still snoring softly.

His own head is resting about an inch away from Molly’s, and his face flushes at the proximity. Asleep, Molly is even more of a sight to behold. Their face twitches slightly as they dream, edges of mascara still clinging to their eyelashes. With the reflection of the snow it’s quite a picture. Once he realizes that he’s staring he pulls his eyes away, rather embarrassed.

Yasha is wrapped around Molly’s other side, Beau tight against her. Caleb wonders how loudly Beau will yell when she wakes up like that. Jester has one leg tossed over Beau and her head resting on Fjord’s chest. His body aches when he shifts slightly, the consequence of the floor.

Still though, it’s nice. He knows he’ll have to deal with the consequences of the snow later, there’s no way that they’ll be leaving today. Caleb’s almost okay with it. With staying with these people, with the unexpected wrench in his plan.

It’s terrifying, and it’s too much for this early in the morning. Gingerly, he moves Nott from his chest and settles her against Molly.

She groans in protest.

“Shh, stay asleep, yeah? You have plenty of time,” he summons Frumpkin to purr against her, and breathes a sigh of relief when she rolls over to fall back asleep.

The fire’s died down to mere embers, and with a careful spell he reignites it. His fire can do that much safely, at least.

It’s still early, about six, and given how late they were up he doesn’t expect the rest of the crew to wake up for at least another hour. So Caleb starts to make coffee, and begins to cook them breakfast. They’re lucky, the owners of the rental house left the kitchen stocked with eggs and a few other things, so they don’t have to rely on Jester’s donut stash and vanilla wafers for breakfast.

He’s not great at cooking, but there’s a rhythm to it that he can get into. As long as he doesn’t consider how he learned to cook, his mother’s hands on his own, it’s soothing. Not to mention that if everyone is feeling like he is, they’ll be craving grease. 

There’s a soft footfall behind him, he starts before turning to see Beau waving an exhausted hand at him.

“Surprised you’re the first one up, I thought you were dead ya know,” she whispers. 

“Not dead, just exhausted. I don’t sleep much when I don’t know where I am. My brain doesn’t stop moving if I do not.”

“We’ve noticed, scares the hell of Nott too.” Caleb shrugs at that. He’s been through enough lectures from her to know.

“Anything we can do to help?” Beau asks, dragging out some pancake mix and joining him in the rhythm of cooking.

“To the best of my knowledge, no.” Caleb says. They don’t speak after that, just cook in tandem until the smell rouses the rest of their family and the kitchen fills with sleepy morning chatter. 

The peace lasts until Jester grabs a fistful of pancake mix and slaps it on Fjord’s arm. He screams, she runs, the room fills with chaos once more. Caleb reflects as he watches them chase each other, and decides that this, this might just be as good as it gets.

* * *

Beau can’t sleep. It’s too warm in the cuddle pile and too cold out of it, so she compromises with herself and gets up, to take a walk and exhaust herself. It’s a trick Caleb uses, and since Beau doesn’t have a punching bag, this is the trick that she has to use today.

It’s cold outside, and Beau curses herself for not believing in sleeves. She should have at least brought a blanket, but Jester was hogging the only one that she would have risked stealing from the group. Beau does not want to wake up Jester right now.

Maybe it’s because Yasha left. Apparently snowstorms and thunderstorms are a little bit similar for her, but it means that Beau can’t spend a night slowly and subtly making her way into snuggling in Yasha’s arms. It was only a night of that, but Beau got _used_ to it, alright? Cradled between the strong arms of Jester and Yasha is a fucking dream.

Still, it’s not cold enough that she feels like she should get inside immediately, so she walks anyway, combat boots crunching through the deep snow in a very satisfying way.

She’s looking down at her feet plowing through the stuff when she knocks into a solid wall.

Well, a solid wall of muscle. Beau falls flat on her ass, kicking her foot out on instinct. She catches against Yasha’s shin, and is scared for a second when Yasha leans over because she’s seen how Yasha can suplex someone, but instead of doing so Yasha takes her arm and pulls her up.

“You’re cold,” she tells Beau, and, well, she’s wrong, because Beau feels very hot indeed.

“I was just— everyone’s cuddling and I wanted to get away for a few minutes, you know? Some peace and quiet.”

Yasha nods, and takes off her coat to drape around Beau’s shoulders. It’s heavy and smells a bit like Yasha, and it’s dusted with snow and reveals that Yasha was _not_ wearing long sleeves underneath it. It takes Beau a second or two to speak, but once she does she thinks it’s an alright thing to say. “But you’ll be cold.”

Yasha shrugs, and Beau continues, undeterred. “We can go back inside, anyway.”

“No, stay out here with that until you want to come back in. I’m fine.”

“Well— how about we share it?” Smooth, Beau. “Like, y’know, sit down somewhere and share.”

That’s how they end up lying on the hood of Yasha’s van, her coat across the two of them, Beau absolutely _living_ as she’s cuddled up to Yasha’s chest.

“Where were you off to this time? I didn’t realize you left in snowstorms, too,” she asks, and feels Yasha shrug against her.

“I don’t. I just spent a lot of time with you all, and I felt like leaving for a little bit. Like you did, just now.”

“Oh, right. Makes sense.” Beau pauses. “You’ll be around us a lot when you move into the house.”

“I’ll leave sometimes, there, too.”

“Right.”

Silence, for a few seconds, Beau trying to come up with something, _anything,_ to say to continue a conversation, first date questions, fun facts, anything, when Yasha speaks again. “Is this the house you grew up in?”

“I guess so, yeah. I lived there.”

“Did you like it?”

“I mean, no? That wasn’t the house, though.”

Yasha hums, and Beau thinks that’ll be the end of it, wondering if she can ask about Xhorhas, but Yasha beats her to the punch again. “Your parents, right?”

“Yeah.”

Silence again.

“Are you happy that your father’s dead?”

Beau would probably leave if she weren’t so warm here, so she’s left with only the option of answering. Not answering would be weirder, right? “I… yes? I think? I mean, he was a shitty person and he didn’t give a shit about me.”

The snow starts falling. Yasha pulls her closer instead of answering.

* * *

Beau and Yasha are sleeping on the car. Jester got worried because when she woke up, neither Beau or Yasha were around, but they’re _napping together._ It’s cute! But it’s early, and it only snowed a little bit last night, so Fjord wants to see if they can keep driving now. Caleb wants to keep going, too, the restlessness coming back to him after he’d slept off the exhaustion of all-nighters. They task Jester with waking the two of them up, and turning on the car to warm it up, so what she does next is really on them, and not Jester’s fault at all.

The crunching of the snow doesn’t rouse the two ladies, and after a quick inspection of their faces to make sure that neither of them have frostbite, Jester opens the driver’s side door and slips into the seat, quietly as possible.

She doesn’t have a driver’s license, but she’s seen Fjord and Caleb do it enough that she can turn on the car and put it in drive.

She’s just intending to drive far enough forward that Yasha and Beau wake up and maybe start falling off, except she can’t have gotten more than three feet when there’s a bump, and then a lot of yelling. She slams on the brakes. Turns off the car. Gets out of the car.

“Who the fuck are you?” Beau is yelling.

“Who the fuck are _you?_ You just ran me over with a _car!”_ says an answering voice, and Jester does not recognize it and is in fact about to ask the Traveller to make her invisible so she can get away, except then Yasha picks up someone from the ground, and it’s a dwarf, covered by nothing but blood and bruises.

Beau locks eyes with Jester, and she waves.

“Jester, did you— were you driving?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah? I’m sorry! I can fix it!” Jester practically leaps over the hood of the car to touch the dwarf’s bare leg, and casts Cure Wounds. Level three, but that’s only because _Jester_ ran her over, otherwise it would probably be less. “There! All better, see?”

“You still— Thank you, you still ran me over,” says the dwarf.

“And _fixed_ it,” Jester retorts.

“Still caused it.”

“Okay, okay,” Beau interrupts, holding both hands up. “Don’t talk to Jester like that. What’s your name?”

“Keg,” the naked dwarf replies.

“Keg, she fixed you. I think that’s pretty good.”

“She also ran me over, which I think is the detail that we’re not dwelling on enough—”

Suddenly it’s Fjord’s voice, cutting through the argument. “What’s going on out here? Who is that?”

“My name’s Keg! Can you please ask these people to put me down? They ran me over,” Keg yells to him.

“I also healed her after that!”

“That’s true, Jester did heal her.”

Caleb, Nott, and Molly are on Fjord’s heels. “Who ran over who?” Caleb asks.

“Jester ran over Keg,” Fjord answers, looking down at them. “Yasha, can you put her down?”

Yasha drops Keg just as Jester yells, “I healed her, though!” and Caleb asks, “Who is Keg?”

 _“She’s_ Keg,” Yasha says, pointing.

“I’m Keg,” says Keg, at the same time.

“Why’s she naked?” Nott asks.

“That is a good question,” Keg replies, drawing herself up to her full height as she gets up from where Yasha dropped her. She’s only a little bit taller than Nott, with short hair and stubble. “Can I answer that after I have clothes on?”

They all kind of fall silent, considering whether they should say no, and then Keg adds, “You _did_ hit me with a car.”

They don’t really argue with her after that, even if Jester _does_ mutter about only running her _over,_ no _hitting_ involved, and she _did_ heal her literally _right_ after.

* * *

Keg fits alright into Nott’s baggy clothes, so they lend her some, and offer her breakfast and a ride, because, well, she _did_ get run over by Jester. She falls asleep almost immediately, very little conversation offered.

With Keg safely sleeping in the backseat of the car they drive for about another eight hours. Nott is literally clawing at the windows of the van, and Beau is shaking her leg in a way that heavily implies she’s going to start hitting someone when they drive past a very pretty graveyard.

The snow dusts over the graves, and it’s midday so it’s not particularly creepy looking. Fjord does a quick glance around the car, noting Beau and Nott, before pulling off to the side.

“Why are we stopping?” Jester asks, peering out the window of the car.

“I think a break to stretch our legs would do us all some good,” he replies, sliding the car into park.

The second the car rocks to a stop Beau and Nott are racing across the graveyard. Jester watches for a second, then bolts after both of them laughing as she does. Fjord gets out himself and stretches, sauntering after them.

They all run or walk laps around the graveyard for close to a half an hour, Caleb stopping to read over some of the last names with an intensity, clearly memorizing them to research later. They’re all settling down in front of the entrance to a crypt, the stone kept clear by a small overhang when Keg stumbles out of the car and towards them.

“I think perhaps we should ask our new companion what she was doing last night,” Caleb suggests.

“That sounds good to me, there has to be a story there and I, for one, want to hear it,” Molly replies.

“Right, I’ll ask,” Fjord says.

Keg settles down in front of them, back against the wall.

“Are you feeling any better this morning?” Jester peers at her, having done her best at healing the car injuries the night before.

“I’ve been worse. You helped, thank you,” Keg replies, and Jester nods approvingly before going back to braiding Nott’s hair.

“Right now, Keg I figure it’s fair that we give you a ride on account of Jester almost killing you, but we were wondering, what were you doing underneath our car, five miles from anyone else, fully naked in a snowstorm?” Fjord asks.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Keg starts, but before she can finish her sentence there’s a horrifying scraping noise as the door to the crypt swings open.

They all dart backwards, falling on their asses into the snow. Beau grabs Yasha, Nott scrambles onto Caleb, screaming. Smoke starts to billow out from the crypt.

“Ghosts! Ghosts, I knew it! I _knew_ there were ghosts! They’re going to kill us all with their poison smoke!” Nott screams.

Caleb furrows his brow.

“Calm down, please, Nott, that’s not poison smoke, that’s—” 

Beau cuts him off, “Weed.”

Nott’s yelling immediately changes gears.

“Caleb, you shouldn’t know what weed smells like! You’re better than that, you’re better than the rest of us! Caleb—” She’s cut off this time by a low sultry voice from the smoke.

“Well would you look at this? Visitors in my graveyard, that hasn’t happened in quite some time. Welcome.” There’s a seven foot tall, pink haired firbolg standing in front of them, a joint still between his fingers.

They all stare in confusion except for Molly, who immediately crosses the distance to shake his hand.

“I’m Mollymauk, Molly to my friends, say, you got any more of that?” they say, and the firbolg considers them before nodding slowly.

“I’m Caduceus Clay. It might take me a minute to gather it up, but I’m sure I can find enough to share with all you fine folks.”

He returns to the crypt to emerge with a large duffel bag. There’s more weed in it than there really should be, especially in a graveyard.

At least most of the group think that at least _one_ of them should really come up with an argument against taking drugs from this crypt stranger, but then he pulls out some mushrooms and the common sense really leaves the window.

They wake up four hours later on the highway all clad in only their underwear.

Clay is driving the car, fully clothed, covered in beetles.

* * *

Beau’s problem isn’t that she’s in her underwear. It’s that somehow, she’s ended up in the far back seat, laying on Yasha and Keg who are also both in _their_ underwear. She sees Keg first, and despite seeing her the night before, the context here is different. She wasn’t _looking_ last night.

But now, she can’t seem to _stop_ looking. Keg is brickhouse muscle with stubble ghosting across her chin and Beau’s stomach lurches. She tries to look away to avoid the problem, but _Yasha_ is there, also in her underwear, and given the events of the previous night, that’s somehow worse.

Beau glances back and forth one last time, considers her options, and then pushes her feet up against the seat and launches herself full body through the middle seat, smacking Caleb and Molly, who are still groggy, to land in the passenger seat.

She lands on top of Nott, who groans and slaps at her.

It’s wild, because Nott is way too small to safely sit in the front seat, and now that there are nine of them Nott should really be on someone else’s lap.

“Hey! Get off of me! Let me go!” Nott screams, thrashing at Beau.

Beau grabs both of her arms and holds them until Nott stops flailing, and is only left clenching and unclenching her dirty fingernails.

“Shush!” she orders, a stage whisper. “I needed to get out of the backseat and you shouldn’t be in the front seat by yourself anyway, you don’t make the weight requirements.”

“Those are bullshit anyway,” Nott grumbles. “Besides, it’s not that crowded back there.”

“Yeah, but it is _hot,”_ Beau says, giving Nott Meaningful Eye Contact so the goblin understands her problem without Beau actually having to say it in a relatively small space where two incredibly hot women may be able to hear even if she whispers.

“Yep,” Clay pipes up. “That’s why you all stripped down to your delicates. I still don’t know how to work the heating in a car like this.”

Beau looks sideways at their new companion, and hums some sort of affirmative. “Why are you driving?”

“Well, the green gentleman was still in the gas station when you all wanted to leave, so I decided that I was most fit to drive.”

It’s then that Beau looks back in the van and counts heads. “Oh, fuck, we left Fjord and Jester.”

Caleb, pressed up against Molly in a way that tells Beau that he’s either still a bit high or still using that as an excuse for contact, sits straight up. “Oh, fuck.” He closes his eyes for a second. “We left Frumpkin, too.”

The problem of Frumpkin is easily fixed, Caleb just snapping him back to the car.

Fjord and Jester are a little bit harder.

* * *

Luckily, Fjord is responsible and keeps his phone fully charged at all times. Caleb doesn’t have one, Nott wears out her battery in two hours or less when she’s not using it to chew on, Jester doesn’t use hers for anything but dress-up games, Molly has Tinder and Grindr on theirs and nothing else, Yasha might not know what a cell phone is, and Beau’s screen is so cracked that she can’t actually use it in any meaningful way. Nott must charge her phone enough to call, because about an hour and a half after Jester and Fjord realize that they’re alone, Fjord’s front jeans pocket starts buzzing.

“That happy to see me?” Jester asks, and Fjord shushes her to answer.

Nott’s voice. “Where are you two? You can respond to this message.”

“Where you left us, the gas station off of exit 79,” Fjord replies.

He hears Nott relay the information to whoever’s driving, and her voices becomes clearer as she addresses him again. “We will be there soon! Probably. Eventually.”

Someone else’s voice in the background, probably Caleb’s. “Caleb says it’ll be about an hour. Can you entertain yourselves until then?”

Fjord sighs, looks to Jester. “Yeah, I think we’ll be able to pass the time.”

She at least waits for him to hang up before she says, “I have some good ideas on how we can pass some time, Fjord!”

He’s glad for this, because it means that no one but her sees or hears him get flustered.

And no one but her gets to see the rest of it, either.

* * *

“Why are you guys all naked?” Jester asks, piling into the car, drawing Nott into her lap.

“We’re not naked, we’re in underwear,” Nott points out.

“Same thing. Oh! Were you all introducing Keg and Clay to our group? Because I don’t know if Keg should be doing those kinds of things yet. She got run over, you know.”

It takes everyone a second to process what Jester is implying, but they all chime in at once, a chorus of:

“We did not—”

“Nein, nothing like that—”

“Not that I wouldn’t like it, but—”

“Legally I’m not allowed—”

“I just met you guys, so—”

Except for Clay and Yasha, who seem relatively unbothered by the implication. Yasha’s maybe a bit flustered, but Clay is totally fine. “What an interesting experience that would be,” he says after a few more seconds. “Nothing of the sort happened with these fine people.”

Molly leans forward, close enough that Clay’s ear flicks a bit. “Would you like it to? I’m sure we could work it out, you know, a fun time. You ever tried something like that before?”

“Haven’t tried much of anything before, actually,” Clay drawls, unbothered by the flirting that’s causing Fjord to put a hand over his face.

“Oh? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing like you’re implying, Molly.”

“I suppose the question stands, then. Would you like to?”

A groan goes through the car, too used to Molly’s flirtations by now. Clay doesn’t answer immediately, so Beau goes for it. “Fjord, aren’t you a virgin, too?”

Fjord shakes his head. “No, no. I’ve gotten that done with.”

“Done with? You got a story? Seems like you gotta have a story to be done with something.”

“Not really. It was a pretty normal time. Nice girl, her place, kind of thing.”

“Aw, boring.” There’s a pause. “I lost my virginity in the employee break room of a Spencer’s. Used one of the vibrators they sold.”

“Gods above,” Caleb mutters, exasperated by his friend’s offered information.

“What, it’s a good story! We got caught because someone saw me steal it and they came in in the middle of it. Wasn’t allowed back there. What’s _your_ story, then?”

Caleb seems like he’s trying to figure out how to lie, then replies haltingly. “I… I was not, it was not very special, like Fjord’s. It was with two people, but I believe that’s the only interesting part of it.”

Molly whistles, low and impressed. “Respect.”

Caleb shrugs, and Jester takes initiative. “My first time was in a bathroom of a gas station,” she offers.

“Oh, nice! Very trashy, I like it,” Beau says, and leans to give Jester a high five, which she enthusiastically returns.

“It was fun! It was with a _really_ handsome guy, too, and it was very, you know, spur of the moment, take my clothes off now kind of thing, and it was very good.”

“Can I ask you something, Jester?” Fjord asks.

“Yeeeeeeees, Fjord?”

“You wouldn’t, uh, happen to be talkin’ about a particular gas station, would you?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“So, just now.”

“Yep!”

“Clay, can you pull over and let me drive so I don’t have the impulse to jump out of the car?”

“That’d be swell,” he says, and doesn’t pull over.

“Can we… pull over, then?”

“What?”

“Can we pull over so I can drive?”

“Oh, I was answering Molly’s question, but, yes, of course,” Clay says, and pulls over to the side of the road.

Jester waits until they’re driving again to ask Fjord, “What’s the problem? Did you not like it?”

“Wait, you two slept together?” Nott asks, looking between the two of them.

“Oh, yes! I’ll tell you _all_ about it, later,” Jester says, grinning and patting Nott’s head. “Now, Fjord, what’s the problem?”

“Liking it was not the problem, believe me,” he replies. “I just— if that was your first time I’d’ve rather made it special, you know?”

“It didn’t need to be special, I liked it how it was.”

“It was your _first time,_ though.”

“What’s that matter? She had fun, Fjord. Virginity’s a social construct, anyway,” Molly pipes up.

“I agree with Fjord on this one, actually. Jester, you deserve candles and shit,” Beau tells her. “I know I just said I liked it because it was trashy, but now I’m compelled to disagree with Molly. Plus, it’s true, you’re a lady. Candles are nice.”

“I didn’t _want_ candles, I wanted _Fjord,”_ Jester insists.

“Candles are overrated anyway,” Molly says, and Jester leans over to them.

“How did you lose your virginity, Molly?” she mock whispers, as though the rest of the car isn’t deeply tuned into the conversation.

Molly laughs. “It’s going to sound like a lie, but I promise it’s the gods-honest truth.”

They stop, waiting for confirmation from the rest of the car that they will take this pact seriously. Everyone makes some kind of agreement so they carry on.

“I lost my virginity in my own grave,” they announce, and the car erupts into noise.

“Bull _shit,”_ Beau accuses, just as Jester is going “Oh my gods!” and Yasha is nodding, Keg next to her screwing up her nose in disgust.

“Fuck you, Beau. I died, I came back, the first person I slept with was emo enough that they were into it!” Molly defends.

“It _is_ very on-brand for Mollymauk,” Caleb says.

“What better way to celebrate new life, I’d say,” Clay says, and Molly grins, unbuckling their seatbelt to climb into his lap.

“Just what I was thinking. Not any dirtier than doing it anywhere else outside. Keg, you can take my seat if you want, stretch those legs out a little.”

“You’re a fucking weirdo,” Keg replies, kindly. “No funny business.”

“You wound me,” they reply, making themself comfortable as Clay allows them to settle on his lap.

“I’m just saying, you’ve fucked in a—your own grave, you said? How did you come back?”

Molly shrugs. “Luck?”

Keg shakes her head. “Whatever. You fucked in your own grave, legitimately the only weirder thing that this conversation could tell me is how _Nott_ lost her virginity.”

“Well—”

There’s a collective _“NO.”_ when Nott starts speaking, because they don’t know exactly how old Nott is or how goblin relationships work, but they do all know that whatever Nott says is bound to be Not Something They Want To Hear.

"Yasha, where'd you lose it?" Beau asks, specifically to end that vein of the conversation.

"Also in Molly's grave."

This starts a commotion very quickly, everyone asking for details until Molly cuts in. "Okay, no, stop, she doesn't like sharing."

Nott shrugs, and instead says, “Fine. Then, Jester, tell me all about it!”

 _That’s_ enough to send Fjord into a deep blush, his fingers tightening on the wheel and his eyes focusing straight ahead.

* * *

Fjord eventually stops blushing as he focuses on driving, and the car settles into the regular sense of chaos. Beau and Keg spend a half hour playing Ninja, neither of them getting hit unless they want to. (They seem to want to pretty regularly.)

The discussion of food comes up when they stop at the next rest stop.

“I’m starving to death,” Nott announces, before taking off to gather an assortment of snacks from the gas station.

Caleb flicks his eyes up to the sun and announces, “It’s past noon, so we should probably get lunch.”

“How come we don’t get lunch when you’re driving, but when anyone else drives we do?” Jester asks him, defensive.

“When I drive, I don’t need to eat.”

“You do need to eat, though, Caleb!” Nott tells him, tone scolding.

He hums a vague affirmative. “Is there shitty Chinese available?”

Jester leans forward. “Ooh, or a bakery!”

“Homophobia chicken for me, please,” Molly calls.

“I need salad and armor,” Keg pipes up.

“Why armor?”

“Just in case Jester decides to run me over again.”

“I _healed_ you—” Jester starts, and Fjord sighs.

“We can go to all of those places, but it’ll take us longer.”

“I’m fine with that,” Beau says. “I want homophobia chicken, too.”

There’s vague agreement, so they stop by a Chinese place, a bakery, and a Panera before heading to get Molly and Beau their food. The plan is to stop somewhere and eat it all together.

Mollymauk really does try to be good. It’s a whole thing of theirs, trying to be good. But everyone’s distracted and they know that their accommodations that night will be a shitty roadside motel, sharing three to a bed, so, really, unless they got _really_ lucky and ended up sharing with Caleb and Clay, this is the only good they can do.

The good in this case consists of one of their hands fully down Caduceus’ loose pants and a three-minute long, completely silent conversation between the two of them that essentially boiled down to Molly asking if Clay was down, and Clay responding why not.

It’s good enough for Molly, who has some limited experience in this particular brand of stealth, so instead of kissing him, they shift a bit to shield most of their activity from Keg, who’s probably distracted enough by her food and getting her order anyway to take any notice.

They do forget, however, that they ordered Chick-fil-a.

So they startle and curse when the action rams their horns into Caduceus’ chin, because Keg does notice what they’re doing upon turning to ask them for their order, and _yells,_ damn her, _“Right in front of my salad?”_

Fjord whips his head around to make sure no one is dying in the back of the car. Except, when he turns around and sees Molly’s hand down Clay’s pants, he starts yelling as well. Mollymauk curses under their breath and pulls their hand back.

“Are you _fucking_ in the car?” Fjord yells, and that gets everyone else's attention.

“Molly, what the hell.”

“We _live_ here! We are pretty much living in this car! You can’t do that in our _home!”_

“Oh, if I knew that was allowed I would have done something earlier!”

“Listen, we sleep in the same room at night anyways, there was no other time to do it.” Molly defends themself.

“Literally _any_ other time, though. Not while we are stuck in the car, and can turn and see it, that’s just nasty,” Beau points out.

“As if you wouldn’t,” Molly counters, and she shrugs.

“That’s fair.”

Fjord rubs his temples, having finished ordering over the sudden yelling. They’re still sitting in the drive-thru, the person behind the ordering loudspeaker completely silent, confused and alarmed by all the sudden yelling.

“Please, don’t fuck in the car. New ground rule, that I didn’t think we’d need.” 

Caduceus finally speaks up, “I’m mighty sorry, I didn’t realize you fine folks would have a problem with this.”

“You didn’t think we’d have a problem with you having sex in front of us?” Beau says.

“No, it just seemed like the kind of thing you would be alright with,” he says, and that’s it. The next twenty minutes is yelling about the vibe they’re putting out there. Fjord pulls away from the drive-thru.

Fjord bans Chick-fil-a for the rest of the trip, and the yelling changes gears very quickly.

* * *

They stop in a town about two hours away from the house. They could make it that night, but Keg requested a drop off, and Beau is getting fidgety in a way that worries them all. It’s a shitty motel, but it’s the only one between the two places, and it’s cheap and they still need to eat, so they stop.

There’s technically two rooms at Beau’s request. (She’d pointedly glared at Molly when she did so, which they took great offense to.) No one is leaving the first room, though, because Beau’s still pacing the room. 

“Beau, are you alright?” Caleb finally pipes up after watching this for about three minutes, instead of reading.

“So good!” she replies, through gritted teeth. “Doing great!”

Yasha holds her hands up in front of Beau, palms out, like she’s placating her. Beau starts hitting them, seemingly on instinct, the way she’d hit a punching bag. Yasha doesn’t flinch.

“You don’t look very good Beau.” Jester peers at her, dodging her fists as she does. Beau is silent, so she presses on. “Are you upset because we only get a house because your dad died?”

Beau laughs, but it’s a hollow noise. “Not that. He can rot in hell, for all I care.”

Keg squints. “You didn’t seem that certain when I was under the car.”

Beau whirls on her. “You were eavesdropping while under the car?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt! It seemed like you guys were having a pretty serious conversation.” 

Yasha tilts her head to agree with Keg. “It did take you quite some time to reply.”

“Beau, even if he was awful to you, it’s okay to still be upset that he is gone. It doesn’t mean you’re condoning his actions,” Caleb pipes up, and Beau yells before throwing herself backwards onto the bed.

Nott tucks herself into Caleb’s arms, and they all settle down around Beau. The bed creaks with the weight of everyone. Fjord makes to get up to lessen it, and Jester pulls him back down. There’s a second of silence, and Beau settles her hand over his, then squeezes. He doesn’t move again, and the bed doesn’t break.

“How awful was he, Beau?” Nott asks. Fjord gently reprimands her, but Beau shrugs it off. She rubs her face with her hands.

“Pretty damn awful.” No one pushes, but a couple of hands settle on Beau’s shoulders. She keeps talking after a minute.

“I don’t know. It feels shitty to celebrate his death even though I know he deserves it.” She picks at the sheets, letting go of Fjord to do so.

“It’s hard to not have parents anymore, no matter the reason,” Caleb says, and the rest of them nod.

“I don’t know. Long term I know I’m better off, but short term, it’s a complicated feeling.”

“I know that feeling, Beau! I felt the same way when I had to leave my mom. I knew I got to see the world, which is _so_ exciting, and I made friends, but I miss her too! Is it like that?”

“Kinda, yeah, except it’s more that I miss the idea of having a father figure more than I miss him. He never did anything much for me.”

“Father figures don’t have to come from blood. I never knew my folks, but I had a pretty good dad,” Fjord contributes.

“You don’t have to get all philosophical on me here. It doesn’t matter, we have a fucking cool house now.” Beau says, and they all laugh in agreement.

Jester presses a kiss to Beau’s forehead, Molly following suit even though Beau quickly pushes them off. A few murmured apologies and platitudes are part of the next few minutes, Frumpkin snapping in to knead at Beau’s chest until she turns her face into Caleb’s coat and they all fall quiet and still save for her shaking shoulders. 

At some point they all end up moving so they’re laying in a heap, bodies pressed against each other. It’s gentle breathing for the next couple of hours, the chaos forgotten. They take advantage of the exhaustion from the road trip, even Caleb falling asleep rather easily. The bed isn’t nearly big enough, but they make it work, pressing close and crushing Clay just a little bit because he’s too big. For a minute, they’re at peace. At some point during the night Yasha, Beau, and Keg slip off, the product of some hushed whispering. Everyone else is polite enough to pretend Keg’s armor clanking doesn’t wake them.

* * *

The Mighty Nein and their new companions wake way after the sun the next morning. No one bothered with an alarm, the hurry suddenly gone from the journey as it approaches completion.

Keg sneaks out, this time only waking Beau and Yasha, and leaves notes for every member of the party. Jester sulks when hers mentions being hit by a car, but smiles again immediately upon coming to the end of the note, where there’s a crude little drawing of a tiefling(?) and a dwarf(?), with the dwarf looking unbruised. They load everything into the back and pile in.

Just before they’re all in, Fjord stops and looks at Caduceus. 

“Are you coming with us? This is the end of the road, no more traveling. House is about two hours away, or we could drop you off.”

“If it’d be alright, I’d like to stay. I’ve grown rather attached to being around folks, and I don’t have much of anywhere else I need to be right now. Is there room for me?” he responds.

They all make eye contact before shrugging. It’s not the smartest idea, maybe, but they have a penchant for strays. They can’t _not_ take him.

“We’ve got plenty of space,” Fjord says.

“House is big, too,” Beau adds.

“Perfect,” Clay replies, and that’s the end of it.

They spend the first half of the ride working out who’ll get what rooms, because Clay complicates the matter just slightly. Eventually Beau stops the argument between Molly and Nott over who gets the master bedroom (Nott says Caleb should) by simply slapping her hand on the dashboard and announcing, “Rooms are first come, first serve.”

The car ride as a whole is more subdued than one would expect, part exhaustion and part reluctance for the journey’s end, but the excitement bubbles over when they see the house. It’s fucking huge. They see what Beau was talking about when her only descriptor for it was “big.” Clearly, her family’s business did very well on the three-story, balconied sloping roofs of this house.

“Beau, there’s a _tower!”_ Jester says, excitedly.

Beau hums, pushing down the dread she feels by reaching for someone’s hand. She finds Fjord’s, who’s driving with a hand on the gearstick, and he looks over to her with a smile that dispels her trepidation. She’s got a new family now, to fill up the empty house and the empty spaces that her first family never wanted to.

“Yeah, there is,” she replies, dropping Fjord’s hand. “Jester, hand me the last of the pretzels.”

“I call dibs on the tower,” Molly says, their tail thwapping against the back window of the car.

“Cool, alright, there’s nothing in it, and you have to sleep there.”

“Wonderful.”

“Is there a garden?” Clay asks, and Beau nods.

“Yeah, I think. I don’t know how well-kept it is.”

“Unkempt is good, unkempt means the Wildmother has kept doing her job. I’d like that, if I can call dibs on something, as well.”

“Yeah, knock yourself out.”

They don’t bother to unpack, scrambling out of the car like excited children as soon as Fjord parks the van. “Beau, give us a tour,” Caleb tells her, and Beau rolls her eyes, gesturing them all to follow her up the stairs to the wraparound porch and double doors.

“Here’s the door. There used to be a fountain but I think my mom found it tacky and now it’s just a porch.”

She unlocks the door without ceremony and leads them into a marble foyer. “There’s a bathroom right over there.”

To the right, a bar and lounge with a fireplace, and a workout room that Yasha looks at and nods.

To the left, a dining room, large kitchen, and.

“Here’s the library,” Beau says, leading them into the dark-paneled room with its musty smell and dark green upholstery.

Caleb sits down immediately. “This is my room.”

“Cool, man. There’s also bedrooms.”

Caleb waves them off. Jester makes a joke about him finally getting in some private edubation time, and they all snicker until Beau leads them downstairs to the alcohol cellar and Nott sits down there. “My room.”

“Notttttttt, you should get a room close to mine, we can have sleepovers,” Jester cajoles, and Nott shakes her head, bringing out her flask.

“Not gonna work. Give Caleb the master bedroom, I’ll be down here a while.”

Beau shrugs, takes them to visit the basement guest rooms (“They might be for prisoners because they only lock from the outside.”) and then up two flights to the second floor. Nott and Caleb are given the smallest room, because they aren’t there to say otherwise, Yasha takes the next one because she likes that it’s not flashy, and Jester squeals over the bedroom that Beau is most reluctant to show them.

“It’s so pink! Beau, I didn’t know you’d have _any_ pink in your house.”

“This used to be my room. I was sixteen when they renovated,” Beau says, kicking at the large Victorian dollhouse on the floor. “Last-ditch attempt before I got kidnapped. Don’t know why the fuck they thought it’d work.”

“I love it. Can I have this room?” Jester asks, a bit pleading, and Beau smiles when she nods and Jester immediately grabs Molly’s hand so they’ll jump on the bed with her.

Empty spaces fill quite a bit more.

“You’ll want to wash those sheets before you sleep in them,” Fjord says, and Beau nods.

“Yeah, I’ve fucked on those.”

Jester doesn’t stop jumping, but Molly does a front-flip off the bed, landing with a bit of a stumble. “I’m not touching anything Beau’s fucked.”

“Better not touch Yasha, then.”

“Fuck you, Beau.”

“Fuck you, Molly,” she replies, but she’s smiling, much too hard to really mean the middle finger she gives them.

Next they find Fjord’s room, a guest room that’s _actually_ a guest room, and the room Beau claims as her own because she always slept in it when she could get away with it. “I’ve also fucked in _this_ room.”

“We don’t need to know every room you’ve fucked in.”

“It’s every room. Anyway, wanna see the master bedroom?”

“I’m calling that one already,” Molly says.

“You’ve already got the tower,” Jester points out. “Clay doesn’t have a bed yet.”

Molly turns to Clay, grinning. “He can share mine, if he’d like.”

“I’ll want my own at some point, but I’ll do that for a few days, if you’d like,” Caduceus responds. “I’m sure it’ll be very nice indeed.”

Molly makes a noise of delight when Beau shows them into the bedroom, and it only gets higher-pitched when they see the bathroom. Whatever noise it is they make when they see the bathtub, it’s not nonsexual anymore.

“Caleb could use this,” Jester giggles.

“It’s a _Jacuzzi,_ Jester, dearest, _I_ could use this. And Caleb could join me, of course,” Molly replies, taking off their coat to sit, otherwise fully clothed, in the large tub. There’s enough space for their legs _and_ tail to stretch out. “This is the height of luxury. I live here.”

“You do, now,” Fjord replies.

Beau shows them all her father’s study, the tower, the game room, the balconies right outside of Jester’s and Caleb and Nott’s and Yasha’s room, and then she shows them all the pool, the garden, and finally, the hedge maze.

Nott and Caleb join them for the outdoor tour, Nott bringing out two bottles of expensive-ass wine that they all drink from the bottle as they try and navigate their way to the middle of the maze.

It’s not enough wine to get them all drunk, even with Jester abstaining, but it certainly feels like tipsiness, with the sun sinking lower in the sky towards evening, light filtering through bare boughs of the the large old trees that loom over the backyard and love filling the air in the form of laughter and banter.

It’s them, as a family, all together, enjoying their new situation, no one planning on a forever but no one quite planning an end, either. It’s, for more than a few moments, perfect, hands brushing against each other and half-tipsy stumbling pressing shoulders close.

An easy family, born by choice, settling into a new home that has nothing to do with the structure they’d just toured.

And the end of the maze, cherry tree that sheds flower petals onto the bench in the fall.

And on the bench— 

“Hey, everyone else sees the bird person on the bench, too, yes?”


End file.
